


Hart

by loathlylady



Category: The Emperor's Edge Series - Lindsay Buroker
Genre: Forum: Emperor's Edge, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22040485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loathlylady/pseuds/loathlylady
Summary: Basilard before.***Originally posted on The Emperor's Edge forums as part of the Santacarius exchange before the forums were taken down. Going through my files to archive stuff here!
Kudos: 1





	Hart

The hunter crouched among the bracken, the odor of the ferns sharp in his nose. It would fill the nose of any passing deer, too, and help to disguise his smell. Not completely, but enough that if the wind changed while he waited, the deer might still come close enough for him to get a shot with his bow. It was early autumn, and the summer-fat creatures should be preoccupied with getting fatter for winter — the acorns lying thick on the ground less than a bow’s shot away would lure them to him, and they would be too distracted to notice the bracken shudder as he stood and released his arrow.

  
Across the clearing made by the oak’s spreading branches, the ferns quivered and then parted. A sleek young buck emerged from their cover. The hunter leaned forward, poised on the balls of his feet, but then made himself settle back down and wait. His grandfather had taught him that deer were like women — rushing would scare them off. Better for them to get comfortable and come to you. Some things, his grandfather said, were worth waiting for.

  
He pressed a smile into the shoulder of his leather tunic before it could turn into a laugh. It hadn’t made much sense when he was a boy, but experience had proven his grandfather correct. His wife had certainly been worth waiting for, but he would not let her know about his grandfather’s saying. He did not think the comparison would please her.

  
After a long moment of twitching ears and flaring nostrils, the buck bowed his head and started lipping up the acorns. He looked as if he had fared well during the summer, and was young enough that his meat would be tender still. A prize. Fat would sizzle in the fire like rain hissing against a tent when they roasted him.

  
The hunter pushed his thick, blond braid over his shoulder, letting it fall down his back. With the buck’s head turned away from him, he nocked his arrow and rose smoothly and silently from the ferns. When the deer did not bolt, he found his target and released the arrow.

  
The arrow struck the buck’s side, and instead of falling to the ground as expected, the buck sprang into the bracken, lost from sight in a single bound.

  
Without stopping to curse his luck, the hunter trotted after the buck. His arrow had not found the heart, only the lungs. He could have hours of tracking ahead of him, if he found the creature at all.

  
He followed the trail of blood droplets and broken fern fronds through the forest. It led downhill toward the stream that separated him from his wife and cousin, collecting the last of the season’s fruit from the trees that grew on the southern side of the mountain valley. They were far enough away that their presence would not interfere with his hunting, and he was to re-join them when he was done.

  
After nearly a mile of trudging through undergrowth and bracken still damp with the previous night’s rain, he found the young deer caught in a tangle of washed up branches at the stream’s edge, where the buck had to tried to leap across. The buck attempted to rise up again when the hunter drew near, but he did not have the strength and collapsed against the branches. His eyes were wide and alarmed, his body tense and quivering. Bloody foam flecked his lips, and his breathing was stertorous and uneven. He was near the end, but could last for hours yet, slowly bleeding and in pain.

  
“Shhh,” the hunter said, crouching behind him to avoid flailing legs and hooves in what was to come. He slid his hand along the buck’s tense shoulder as he undid the tie that held his hunting knife in its sheath. The muscles bunched beneath his hand and the buck’s dark eyes rolled in panic as the hunter slipped his hand up the creature’s neck and found the notch behind the jawbone. He grabbed the deer firmly around the muzzle, extending the neck, and then sliced deeply behind the jawbone to let the buck’s life blood flow quickly and mercifully into the stream.

  
The hunter stepped back out of range of the buck’s small antlers and waited for him to finish his kicking. The cut stole the buck’s voice, and all was silent as he watched. He regretted his poor shot. He had had the time and opportunity to make this a brief death, and still he had not achieved it. His grandfather would have some saying about this, but if that did not help, he would speak to the priestess in his tribe to find out how he might balance this guilt. It was one of the risks of hunting, but — he sighed soundlessly. His family needed the meat and the skin for winter. The prospect of fat hissing in the fire no longer seemed so welcome.

  
When the buck’s eyes had grown dim and inert, the hunter came forward again after cleaning his knife off on a tuft of grass at the stream’s edge. He removed a length of braided leather rope from his belt and used it to haul the carcass up the steep bank. Throwing the rope over a branch, he hoisted the dead deer up for butchering.

  
As he was tying the butchered meat up in the skin to carry it back to the village, a sound like a tree branch cracking from the weight of too much snow came from the other side of the stream. He raised his head, heart hammering sickly in his throat. Only Turgonians had anything that would make a noise like that, this time of the year. It had been far in the distance, but not too far. The fruit trees on the southern slope of the valley.

  
The noise came again, and then the sky was alive with shrieking and screaming birds rising to the south, so loud the distance barely dulled the noise.

  
His wife. His cousin. _Slavers_.


End file.
